“Doing It All” Is A Myth

After hitting the button on my third alarm this morning, I was (as usual) not wanting to get up at all.  So instead I was lazing in bed and thinking through my day.  Suddenly it hit me.  The perfect day that I planned out was completely thwarted.

I was going to rock this whole Mom and Business Woman thing.  The plan was to take my daughter and her class mates to an outing in town, come into my office to work and then take them home again.  Easy right?  Maybe.  Except that I totally forgot that I have to take Knox to school and the small matter that I had a Skin Renewal appointment in Claremont at 9.

Aaaand, if you know anything about Cape Town traffic, you’ll know that trying to get to all of this between 8am and 9am is basically impossible.  It’s like a good hair day – it happens, but only when there’s no one there to see it.

But back to my morning.  Luckily I could call in the special forces for assistance.  My Mom took Knox to school and I called Skin Renewal to push my appointment just a bit later to 9.30.  Which seems like it all worked out right?

Well no.

Because as I was racing from Claremont to Town I realised that I was beating myself up in my thoughts.  Do you do that?  If you’re a woman, of course you do.  I just can’t believe that I am alone in this.

There I was alone in my car – I could have been singing off key to all the throw back tunes on KFM, but instead I was crapping on myself for being disorganised, not being at the office enough, not blogging in the last two days etc.  Obviously that’s not a good enough rant at oneself, so I upped it.  Because then it spiralled to not spending enough time with my children, not showing that I love my husband enough, not playing with the dogs enough, not seeing my friends enough, not being able to be all things to all people.  Blah blah blah.

It was tiring listening to myself rant.  I hate it.  But I realised something while I was shouting at myself…

The thing that I realised in all of that, is that as soon as I am totally nailing one aspect of my life, something else is suffering.  It’s suffering so bad.

For example in the last couple of days I have been owning Business Woman and Mom.  I was getting to most of my emails while still being around to help my kids through their homework.  But did I have time to blog?  Nope.  Did I cook?  Nope.  Did I connect with Seth last night?  Nope – I fell asleep at like 9pm.  Did I clean the house?  Oh heck no.  Although to be fair, I never get that last one right.

People often ask me how “I do it all” and so I’d like to just say very clearly, that I don’t.  I don’t do it all.

Not by myself anyway.

And even though I could rant at myself forever about my shortcomings, I know that it’s impossible to do it all, all the time.  Imagine how freaking exhausted you’d be.

I don’t even really know where this post is going, except to say to that woman out there who is feeling like a failure for dropping some of the many balls that we have to juggle – I see you.  I feel you.  And it’s OK, let’s just pick them up and start all over again tomorrow.